Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services has issued its most serious citation against a Winchester nursing home and as a result it will lose its Medicare and Medicaid funding, according to the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader. The citation is based on claims of abuse and neglect at Winchester Centre for Health and Rehabilitation that Health and Family Services officials would not detail. However Nursing Home Ombudsman Agency executive director Kathy Gannoe says her agency has received 31 complaints about the nursing home. Almost all were resolved satisfactorily, she says. However, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to move forward on its plans to terminate its contract with the home by February 7.

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When investigators tested the opened tub of King Nut peanut butter from a Minnesota nursing home, it confirmed their fears. The peanut butter was contaminated with salmonella – the same exact strain of the bacteria as the one linked to three deaths and more than 400 reported cases of salmonella poising in 43 states, according to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Minnesota Star Tribune. An elderly Minnesota woman who had other health problems was among the victims who died.

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Tennessee nursing homes are lobbying the legislature to put a cap on the amount of damages that plaintiffs can collect in court, according to a report in Nashville, Tennessee’s The City Paper. Sixteen states, including Tennessee, do not put monetary limit for damages such as pain and suffering, which has resulted in millions of dollars in damages awarded to victims for nursing homes‘ violations of patient care. The nursing home industry says without damage limits, nursing homes in those states become a target for out-of-state trial lawyers.

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Nora Bekis trusted her son Larry to handle her matters. The 83-year-old woman had chronic lung disease and dementia and had moved into a Minnesota nursing home. She gave her son power of attorney to pay her bills and care for her home. Larry took out a $100,000 reverse mortgage on his mother’s home, but somehow Nora’s nursing home bill went unpaid to the point where she owed a whopping $49,000, according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press.

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Social workers play an important role in nursing homes, serving as an advocate for patients. However few are properly trained for the jobs they hold, according to the Iowa City Press Citizen, which referenced a national study on nursing home social workers.

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Canadian officials blame inadequate staff-to-patient ratios for overworking, under training and simply frustrating Nova Scotia nursing home staff members, causing them to be abusive to their patients, according to The Canadian Press. As a result, 30 incidents of physical, financial or emotional abuse by staff members were reported over a one-year period.

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A U.S. Justice Department report claims that residents at William F. Green State Veterans Home in Bay Minette, Alabama, suffered significant harm and risk from the facility’s inadequate medical and nursing services, accoding to the Mobile Press Register.

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“We realized that he wouldn’t live forever but we didn’t think he would die of bed sores,” says a family member of 79-year-old William Taylor of Wee County, Scotland, to the Wee County News.

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Florence Ko, 81, had lived at Nu’uano Hale, a nursing home in Honolulu, for 18 months when a week before Christmas nursing home staff dropped her off at Straub Clinic & Hospital Emergency Room dressed in a hospital gown and holding her only personal belongings – a purse and a cell phone, according to the Honolulu Advertiser.

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Dean Cole’s dementia was getting unmanageable for his wife, Virginia, so on Dec. 8, 2006, his family moved him into Golden Living Center Greeley nursing home in Oakdale, Minn. Within 20 days he had lost 20 pounds and had slipped into a coma. A month later, the 71-year-old man was dead, according to the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn. Star Tribune. The cause? Severe dehydration, renal failure, pneumonia and colitis.

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